I’ve been saying for years that you are the best “political
photographer” in the Washington press corps. By that I mean one who sees the
Capital’s political forces without an ideological or partisan filter, your
twice-weekly columns snapping pictures of what’s really going on. Your
Tuesday column, “Pass the Duct Tape,” is a treasure, a perfectly focused
snapshot of the nonsense coming out of the Bush administration’s warriors
about this new “Osama Bin Laden” tape. The editor of the Times
editorial page, Gail Collins, was not taken in by the ruse either. In her lead
editorial Wednesday, “Duck and Cover,” she “couldn’t help wondering if
[bin Laden’s] expression of solidarity with Iraq might have been a way of
luring the United States into an attack on Baghdad that would rally the Muslim
world against the West, producing new converts to Al Qaeda.” Absolutely. It
looks like the ladies of the Times are sharper than the fellows in
seeing through the charades of the GOP warhawks. But then, Men are from Mars,
Women from Venus.

I’m going to run a good bit of your column, Maureen, but will provide the
link to it so readers can get the full flavor if they find the excerpts
appealing to the eye. I’m also appending some revelations by William Rivers
Pitt about how the Bin Laden tape was misrepresented by Secretary of State
Colin Powell when he first revealed knowledge of it. At first MSNBC.com
accurately represents the tape in which bin Laden calls for the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein, it then alters the report to get in line with Powell’s
misrepresentation – as the original report did not fit the needs of the
Pentagon. Who can you trust anymore? Certainly not any of the
administration’s warhawks, who think it is okay to prevaricate for a good
cause, in this case war. No, I’d rather trust your camera!!

WASHINGTON: Osama bin Laden came to the rescue of George W. Bush
yesterday.

The president and his secretary of state had been huffing and puffing to prove
a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. George Tenet, who presides over a
C.I.A. full of skepticism about the tie, did his best for the boss, playing up
the link to the Senate.

Ignoring all the blatant Qaeda hooks to Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and
Pakistan; ignoring the fact that Osama has never had any use for the drinking,
smoking, womanizing, secular Saddam; ignoring the fact that Saddam has no
proven record of sharing weapons with Al Qaeda, the Bushies have been hellbent
on making the 9/11 connection.

The world wasn't entirely buying that rationale for war.

And then who but Osama himself should pop up on an audio tape, calling on
Muslims to fight the U.S. if the "infidels" attack "our
brothers in Iraq."

Osama's disdain for Saddam still gleamed through. He barely mentioned the
Iraqi leader and seemed to be holding his nose when he gave permission to his
Qaeda brethren to fight "the Crusaders" alongside Saddam's Baath
Party, "even if we believe and declare that the socialists are
apostates," and whether Saddam remains in power or not.

Still, the administration pounced on the tape, hoping it would prove to those
epicene Old Europeans, with their poufy blue-helmeted U.N. force, that Al
Qaeda and Iraq were "bound by a common hatred," as the State
Department's Richard Boucher said.

Mr. Powell was so eager to publicize Osama's statements that he broke the news
himself at a Senate Budget Committee hearing, hours before Al Jazeera even
acknowledged it had the tape. He said the tape showed that Osama was "in
partnership with Iraq," and proved that the U.S. could not count simply
on a beefed-up inspection force in Iraq.

In the past, Condi Rice has implored the networks not to broadcast the tapes
outright, fearing he might be activating sleeper cells in code. But this time
the administration flacked the tape. And Fox, the official Bush news agency,
rushed the entire tape onto the air.

So the Bushies no longer care if Osama sends a coded message to his thugs as
long as he stays on message for the White House?

To get Saddam, the Bush administration is even willing to remind the American
public that it failed to get bin Laden. Its fixation on Saddam seems to have
blinded it to the possibility that Osama might be perversely encouraging
America in this war.

The administration and Al Qaeda both have a purpose for invading Iraq, and
both want a regime change. Both talk about "liberating" the Arab
people, but Osama's vision is apocalyptic. He wants the Middle East - Israel
and the Arab monarchies - to go up in flames. By Zionizing our battle with
Iraq and promising an anti-American theocracy, he hopes to radicalize recruits
for a jihad against an American occupation of Arab land....

* * * * *

You can find the report of William Rivers Pitt at Truthout, a
solid source of antiwar reporting. Pitt, by the way, is a Boston high school
teacher who had two NYT bestsellers in the last year, one co-authored
with Scott Ritter, the weapons inspector:
http://truthout.org/docs_02/021303A.htm. Here is the heart of his report:

Secretary of State Colin Powell set
the stage for this new bin Laden statement early on Tuesday, much to the
surprise of CIA Director George Tenet. Powell, during testimony at a Senate
Budget Committee meeting, let it drop that the Middle East news network Al
Jazeera had in hand a tape of Osama bin Laden. Tenet, seated with the
Intelligence Committee, had not heard of this tape. One is left wondering at
Powell's sources, especially after the story unfolded.

Powell used the existence of this tape, and the words he claimed bin Laden
had said on it, to further tie Saddam Hussein to international terrorism. He
claimed bin Laden was clearly establishing a connection between himself and
Hussein on the tape, beyond all question. "This nexus between
terrorists and states that are developing weapons of mass destruction,"
said Powell, "can no longer be looked away from and ignored."

The actual tape, played and translated live on every major cable news
channel, told a very different story. Osama bin Laden swore vengeance
against America if Iraq was attacked, and demanded that the Muslim world
stand in solidarity with the Muslim people of Iraq. In very clear words,
Osama bin Laden told the people of Iraq to rise up against both American
aggression and against "socialist" Saddam Hussein. If the
translations that were provided were reliable, there is no ambiguity in bin
Laden's words on the matter. So much, it seems, for Powell's case that
Hussein and bin Laden are working together.

And this is where it gets interesting.

An MSNBC.com report on the bin Laden tape carried the following sentence:
"At the same time, the message also called on Iraqis to rise up and
oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who is a secular leader." This
clearly confirms the clarity of mind Osama bin Laden displayed in regard to
Saddam Hussein, and conforms to the recorded message heard by millions and
millions of people around the world.

Less than twenty minutes after this report appeared on MSNBC, that sentence
was deleted from the report. A few intrepid Internet news junkies, including
myself, preserved what is called a 'screen-grab' of the original article
before it was scrubbed. The version of the article currently in existence
has replaced the text above with this far more benign text: "The taped
statement reflected Saddam, a secular leader, but made it clear that Saddam
was not the immediate target." A similar story line, bereft of the
portions describing bin Laden's wish that Hussein be killed, has appeared in
virtually every mainstream news media report on the matter.

The manner in which this story unfolded brings forth a number of serious
questions.

First of all, questions must be asked regarding Colin Powell's motives in
this. The recording heard by the world diverged significantly from the spin
Powell put on it before the Budget Committee. Osama bin Laden did not state
an alliance with Saddam Hussein, but with the Muslim civilians in Iraq who
will bear the bloody brunt of any American attack. In fact, bin Laden told
the Iraqi people to rise up against Hussein. This is not the way allies deal
with each other.

Why would Powell go to such lengths to stretch the glaringly obvious truth
in this matter? He is already suffering from a deficit of credibility in the
aftermath of the plagiarism scandal that is currently rocking Tony Blair's
administration. Powell stood before the UN last week and praised a British
intelligence dossier that contained cut-and-pasted pages and pages of an
essay, with all spelling and grammatical errors intact, written by a
postgraduate student from California. The data was years out of date,
flat-out contradictory in several key areas, used without the student's
awareness, and yet was offered as an up-to-the-minute assessment of Iraqi
weapons capabilities.

This, in combination with Powell's obviously skewed interpretation of
Tuesday's bin Laden recording, forces us to call into question every single
word he and the Bush administration have said on the matter. The question of
whether Saddam Hussein has ties to al Qaeda terrorism and Osama bin Laden
can be put to bed now, it seems, alongside the tatters and shreds of honor
and dignity formerly enjoyed by the Secretary of State.

More ominously, why would a news network like MSNBC so obviously haul water
for the failed allegations of the Bush administration? Events happen in
seconds on the internet, but merely scrubbing uncomfortable sentences from
articles cannot stop the tens of thousands of readers who are wise enough
now to save the evidence before it evaporates in a cloud of silicon.

These deletions display a manifest breach of faith on behalf of MSNBC, and
call to mind issues surrounding the conflict of interest that are inherent
in the ownership of this network. MSNBC, along with NBC and CNBC, are owned
by the corporate giant General Electric. GE is one of the largest defense
contractors on the face of the earth, and will, bluntly, be paid a king's
ransom in the event of a war. Following this line of questioning leads to
some dark corners, indeed. How often is the data being manipulated by the
corporate-owned media? Are we to rely solely on the nimble fingers of
keyboarded citizens to get to the heart of the matter?

A report appearing later on Tuesday on MSNBC.com served to refute the claims
of collusion between bin Laden and Hussein. "Although Powell sought to
characterize the tape as a concrete link between al-Qaida and the Iraqi
government," the MSNBC.com report read, "White House officials
acknowledged later to NBC News that it did not. Powell did not know it had
not been broadcast when he spoke to the committee and was 'a little on the
front of his skis,' a government source said." These lines were buried
deep within the report.

By Wednesday morning, this text had been completely removed from the article.